Kearney’s Store has been in business for 126 years, although a fire destroyed the original building in 1994 and it was rebuilt using the same brick. Earnest Kearney started working at the store in the early 1940s and bought it in 1983.

(Ben Torres - Special Contributor)

I have roamed far and wide for columns. But I only had to go around the corner for this one.

A landmark store in my part of town is for sale, and I fear that a living piece of history is about to slip away.

Most everyone on the eastern edge of Dallas County knows Kearney’s Store in Sunnyvale. It’s a cluttered old feed and general store that has been in business since 1889.

Stepping inside feels like going back in time. Proprietor Earnest “Skoodum” Kearney is always behind the counter. A visitor or two will likely be shooting the breeze on the tractor-seat stools nearby.

“Kin I hep ya?” the laconic Kearney says by way of greeting to all who wander in.

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And how many times he must have said it? He’s 82 and has never worked anywhere but this store.

Oh, he did odd jobs aplenty over the years — picking cotton, baling hay, cutting firewood, whatever would earn a little extra. But the store has been the one regular job of his life.

“I was 6 or 7 — I don’t remember which — when I first came up here and Mr. Ellis gave me a job sweeping up and burning the trash,” Kearney said. Frank Ellis was the original owner of the store, known as Ellis Mercantile back then.

It sat at the crossroads of the New Hope community. Right across the road was the blacksmith shop of Kearney’s dad. Down the way was the two-room school where Kearney began his education.

And just behind the store, Kearney still lives in the house where he was born.

“Lander bought the store in ’46 after he came back from the war,” Kearney said, continuing the history. That was David Lander, and the store became Lander’s Mercantile — Dealers in Everything.

Kearney kept working there, buying the store from Lander’s widow in 1983. And he just never saw the need to change much of anything. Including the name, for many years. You still hear people refer to the store as Lander’s.

The biggest change in Kearney’s life was forced upon him in 1994. That’s when the original store burned down. An electrical fire, apparently.

Some wondered then whether the old store would survive. But just a day or two later, Kearney was selling feed from a trailer and making plans to rebuild the store almost exactly like it was — even using the same bricks.

It reopened as Kearney’s Store. And walking through it today, you’d swear that even the cobwebs were 1889 originals to Ellis Mercantile.

It’s clear that much of the store operation has gotten the best of Kearney. He has been battling health issues for the last couple of years and the always cluttered store is now even more helter-skelter.

Fireplace grates sit atop the Coke box. And seed packets sit atop the fireplace grates atop the Coke box. And so it goes everywhere you turn.

Still, business was steady as Kearney and I visited one afternoon this week. He sold a couple of chickens, a round bale of hay and a stack of hickory wood. A woman inquired about geese, looking to replace the flock that a bobcat got.

Dog food, livestock feed, hay, firewood — those are the bulk of his sales now. For everything else, it’s just too easy to shop at newer, bigger stores. Even his grandson works at the nearby Lowe’s.

“Money is getting pretty tough,” Kearney said. “If it was a little different financially, I’d probably keep going. But it’s harder to make ends meet.”

No potential buyer has shown any interest in taking over the store. “I hope they do,” he said, not sounding very hopeful at all.

So after 126 years, the closing of a country store and a chapter of local history appears to be at hand.

“I kind of hate to,” Kearney said, “but it’s been a long, long haul.”

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